Another pat on the back for taking on a great project. I am impressed at your desire to see this project through and you seem to have an almost alturistic motive.


As far as patents go, all of the "classic" american shotgun designs are public domain now. The maximum patent life would be 20 years from application for patent, even if it were still in production by the company.
Copyright now lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years for a person or 90 years from the initial copyright date for a company. You could run into copyright issues if you tried to use any of the old ad material from Lefever.
The rights to the name (trademark) would be a much less clear issue at this point as no one is actively marketing guns under this name. The basic rule is that not using the trademark causes the trademark to become open for use by another company.

Ken, I'm sure you knew all of that since you have talked to an attorney. You may want to check with him about whether the trademark would be open at this point. Its likely that you would not have to pay anyone for the use of the name unless someone is making guns or gun related items under the name (or possibly if someone still owns the Lefever company through a buyout).

Please don't substitute any of what I said actual legal advice.

Let me know if you need some help with the trademark issue.
I could track down the relevent law for you, so that you could have an idea of the answer before you talk to your attorney. I will graduate lawschool in December and am already a patent agent, so this kind of research interests me. Let me know if I can help.

Last edited by oganza; 03/29/07 09:25 AM.